Life

ISIS atrocities have little to do with religion

I am tired, tired, tired of the onslaught of anti-Muslim rhetoric. There is no restraint in the nastiness directed at all things Muslim and Islam. Why is it acceptable when journalists, such as Ezra Levant, Anthony Furey or Lorne Gunter, write such diatribes against Muslims? If the same things were said against another religion or its believers, I know there would be a charge of racism levelled against them. The constant pitting of “Western civilization” against the barbarism of Islam is reprehensible, and adds fuel to the fire of racism and hatred.

Muslims are forever being told that the majority don’t speak out, and yet when some of us do, the response is pretty discouraging. We are called defensive or naive.

I am also very discouraged that many people, especially Muslims, use religion for their hateful actions, and insist that it is religion that justifies their atrocities. To the contrary of what some journalists propound, no religion teaches such violence and inhumanity.

For example, a recent letter to the ISIS leader, Baghdadi, from over 100 Muslim leaders and scholars, clearly state that none of the actions of ISIS is following Islamic teachings.

There are many unanswered questions such as who is funding ISIS? If it is their oil then who is buying their oil? Where are they obtaining such a lot of military equipment? From Arab states or the West?

There is some validity to the focus on the state of the “Arab world” — not the Muslim world — and its issues. However, this is a generalization as not the entire Arab world is disintegrating. As journalist Hisham Melhem, says, “Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed. The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings … all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian divisions … The jihadists of the Islamic State did not emerge from nowhere. They climbed out of a rotting, empty hulk — what was left of a broken-down civilization.”

I think it is important to see these wars as another example of man’s inhumanity to man, with various justifications for the atrocities.

In 1763, S. van Pufendorf wrote, “More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature’s causes.” This was further elaborated by Robert Burns in 1784, “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”

I wish the world leaders and the media would recognize that the horrors being perpetrated by the Islamic State in Syria and Shams (ISIS) have little to do with religion.

It is devastatingly a simple example of man’s inhumanity to man. The story of ISIS is not about Islam, it is about the universal human story of cruelty and man’s inhumanity to man, whether it be ISIS, Nazism, fascism or pure hatred of others. Intolerance and arrogance mixed with power and politics has caused most wars.

As the Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, said in 1867, “I am a free man only as far as I recognize the humanity and liberty of all men around me. In respecting their humanity, I respect my own.” Inhumanity lacks the qualities of empathy, pity, warmth, and compassion, which lead to acts of atrocious cruelty.

Bukanin’s description of a state is too extreme, but both ISIS, in their desire to create a caliphate, and the world leaders should pay heed to their roles in this horrific and tragic war.

The U.S.-led war in Iraq did not resolve anything, and has led to increased chaos and killings. The self-righteous call for action that ISIS and others are a threat to the West is puzzling when we know that most of the killing and destruction is happening in Iraq and Syria against their own peoples.

Bakunin states, “The state, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering and enslaving the rest. It protects only its citizens, it recognizes human rights, humanity, civilization within its own confines only. Since it recognizes no rights outside itself, it logically arrogates to itself the right to exercise the most ferocious inhumanity towards all foreign populations, which it can plunder, exterminate or enslave.”

This is what is happening with ISIS, and with other similar groups. ISIS is killing its neighbours and co-religionists and driving people out of their homes. This is not about religion, or morality. As Gandhi rightly pointed out, “I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.”

I hope people understand that the killings and other cruelty being carried out by ISIS and other groups have little to do with religion. It is politics, power, and a sense of injustice, all driven by hatred and not idealism or compassion, no matter how the leaders cloak their actions in righteous language.